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Fashion & Textiles: Plan Your Search

A guide for students of Fashion & Textiles on how to find & reference high-quality books, articles, reports, news & images about fashion. Also includes where to find guides to help improve your fashion design skills.

Why plan your search? 

 

At university you are expected to find and use scholarly information:

  • in your assignments
  • to prepare for class
  • to explore new theories and ideas

However, to find scholarly information you need to search in a particular way to get good results.

Use this page to learn how to plan your search and find the best scholarly information sources to use. 

Step 1: Identify your key concepts

 

Before you find any information, identify the main ideas (or key concepts) in your assignment question or research topic

Example:

How has the trend towards sustainability impacted modern fashion?

The key concepts are: 

Sustainability Fashion

Step 2: Brainstorm keywords & synonyms

 

Different words can be used to describe the same concept.

Think of other words that could be used to describe your key concepts. Think of synonyms, broader terms and narrow terms. Do this for each of your concepts. 

Example:

Key Concept - Fashion

Synonyms Broader Terms Narrower Terms

Fashion

Style

Clothes

Design

Dress

Look

Trends

Slow fashion

Thrifting

Icon

Tips: 

Some resources to help with brainstorming: 

  • Google & Wikipedia
  • Dictionaries & Thesauri
  • Encyclopedias (e.g. Oxford Art Online)

Step 3: Build your search

 

Boolean Operators are a way of telling a database or search engine how to do your search. Watch the video to learn how.

Use Boolean Operators to combine your keywords & synonyms into a search. You can build multiple searches using different synonyms & keywords.

Example: 

Use OR to combine synonyms & similar words:

Key Concept Keywords & Synonyms Search
Fashion

Style

Clothes

 (Fashion OR Style OR Clothes)

Use AND to combine your key concepts together: 

Sustainability AND (Fashion OR Style OR Clothes)

Step 4: Start searching

 

You will need to find different types of information during your studies. These may include: 

  • Books & book chapters
  • Journal articles
  • Newspaper articles
  • Reports
  • Images

The type of information you are looking for will determine where and how you search. 

Using the steps above will help you find most of these information types, but there are also other places to look. 

Explore this guide to learn more about where & how to search for other types of information. 

Step 5: Review your results

 

Not all the information you get from a search will be useful. A successful search will show results relevant to your topic. If your results are not relevant go back and try different keywords in your search.

Find relevant results by checking the: 

Even if your information is relevant, it might not be good quality. Check if it passes the C.R.A.P. Test before you use it.